This Week in Startups
00:23:01 · Alan Chang
[00:23:01] S4: Sure. So I think, you know, like for me, would consider myself like a problem solver. So I've always loved to solve, you know, big, hairy problems. So Revlo is a great platform for me to do that. And, you know, essentially in the last few years I've been thinking about Revlo is growing very fast, it's making a lot of money, it's profitable. There's over 20,000,000 people using it. So I've been thinking, you know, what is next? What is the next biggest problem to solve? And effectively, I actually accidentally stumbled on energy, And it was, I think it was, we looked at the battery company, was battery trading company that was making a lot of money, right? And my first question was woah why are they making so much money? That doesn't make sense. Then I Yeah started exactly like how the hell are they money in batteries right and you know it's the same battery as you know you find in your iphone right and your mac. So we started digging and digging deeper and deeper, and then we just realized actually in the energy industry, there's a lot of broken things, things that don't really make sense, right? And also, we're not doing so well you know, our net zero target, right, in decarbonization. I'll say we are pretty behind target. And also, I don't see a lot of innovation there. And, you know, another thing we found was there's a lot of these solar and wind, right, which is the of, the levelized cost of solar and wind have been dropping rapidly in the last twenty, thirty years. Actually, if you compare it to, let's say, one of the biggest drivers of energy production today, which is your gas, Renewable is actually four times cheaper already compared to gas. What you have today, right, is the cost of energy production is actually going down, but the price of energy is actually going up. So something really doesn't make sense, right? It's like, I think it's a classic example of market failure. So yeah, so effectively, I decided to do something about it. And hence how that's how Test Driven was born.
00:25:16 · Molly Wood, Alan Chang, Jason Calacanis
[00:25:16] S1: And when was that again? [00:25:18] S4: So I had this idea maybe we started looking to it maybe two years ago. But formally we decided to do it maybe sometime this year. [00:25:28] S1: So it's pretty tricky to find details on what you're doing, but I've seen it roughly described as D2C kind of virtual energy, maybe brokering. Tell to the extent that you can, what you're building. [00:25:43] S4: Sure. So let me start with very, very high level. So high level, we're trying to build effectively a community driven renewable shell, right, in one sentence. So let me break it down to two parts. First part is an energy part. So we're building a fully integrated renewable energy company. So that's buying and building, you know, solar, utility scale solar wind batteries, and we sell directly to energy consumers, right? When I say energy consumers, I mean people who actually consume energy. By full integration and bypassing the brokers, we can effectively improve our margins and we pass some of that margin improvement as savings back to the customers. [00:26:31] S1: So you are not a broker, you are in the construction business, you're actually financing and developing renewable projects yourself? [00:26:39] S4: We will build those projects. [00:26:41] S0: Okay.
00:26:41 · Jason Calacanis, Alan Chang, Molly Wood
[00:26:41] S0: Okay. [00:26:41] S4: But we'll also buy, right? We're optionally buying projects that makes the economic stack the work out. But we also build them as well. So we start from scratch. We do anything from, you know, signing from scratch, greenfield, trying to get the permits, the grid connection, the way to construction, and energisation to, you know, buying, you know, project which has permits, what the industry called like shovel ready, right? Literally, you can put a shovel ready shovel. So we look at all stages of projects. [00:27:17] S1: Okay. So you're not I thought maybe you were selling renewable energy credits or similar, but you are actually selling electrons? [00:27:23] S4: Yeah, we are producing or converting electrons rather. Producing electrons and selling those electrons. [00:27:31] S1: Okay. And then but it's direct to consumer, and that seems to be the big unlock in terms of Correct.
00:27:38 · Alan Chang
[00:27:38] S4: Exactly. So the reason why we go direct to consumer, right? So if you look at the energy economy, right? There's like, you can kind of break down into several buckets. So the first big bucket is actually retail. So actually retail is about approximately 30% of the energy economy, which is much bigger than most people think, right? Most people assume it's the big industries that consume most energy, actually retail is a pretty big part. And actually, it will only grow as we electrify transportation. If you compare, let's say, what individuals or SMBs pay compared to, let's say, the Amazons of the world, The difference is very, very drastic. So, I mean, also in news, right? For example, I saw news on AWS signing a big deal with some Californian solar farm a couple of weeks back. So what they do is they go directly to these solar farms, these, you know, generators effectively, negotiate very, very good rates. And if you look at, well, I don't know details of unit rate, but I'm pretty sure it's a much better rate than what you and I pay, right? Effectively, if we look at, you know, energy economy, right? So if you look at, you know, SMBs individuals, they pay a much, much higher rate than these guys, right? So that's number one. Number two is, right now, most of these projects are owned by big private equity firms and big energy companies. And they're also financed by big project finance banks. These energy are sold by, you know, licensed brokers, right? Then it eventually gets to the hand of the customers, right? So effectively, many, you know, so many people have made the slice of the cut before it gets to the customer, right? So effectively, I mean, I just don't think it makes sense, right? I don't think it's very fair either, right? And I think there should be a way for people to have exposure to these you know, pretty profitable assets, right? So that's essentially what we're doing, right? We're basically giving exposure to all our customers, right? You know, power, renewable power, and allow them to offset the energy bill.
00:29:51 · Molly Wood, Alan Chang
[00:29:51] S1: So explain to me how that works. That sounds like now we're getting into the token territory because it's not as simple as you don't become my utility, right? That's not what you're saying. [00:30:00] S4: We're actually utility. You're actually my utility? [00:30:03] S1: Wait, what does PG and E gonna have to say about that? Because I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to disconnect from them as much as I want to.
00:30:10 · Alan Chang
[00:30:10] S4: Yeah. So let's take a step back, right? So, yeah, so we're building a fully integrated renewable energy company from buying building assets, renewable assets, utility scale, sell directly to retail and SMBs. So that's the first thing we do, and we want sell it 10% cheaper. The second thing we do is we effectively want to allow our customers to capitalise energy bill. So what we call like virtual power generators, right, or virtual rooftop solar. Effectively, the problem with rooftop solar, right, is, A, you need a rooftop, and not everyone has a rooftop. And if you live in a city, that's even more difficult, unless you're like uber wealthy, right? Number two is the economics of utility scale generators are much, much better than rooftop on retail scale. Approximate translation is about 2x to 3x, depending on the technology you're looking at. Third is, there's no liquidity for rooftop solar, right? So if you want to sell, let's say, if you need some cash in hand, right? And you want to sell part of your rooftop solar, you can't. That's not really an option. And no one's going to buy off you, right? Unless you sell the whole house. And even if you do sell the whole house, there's no guarantee the new buyer actually values, right, your rooftop solar. There's no, like, let's say you put, you know, dollars 15,000 in, right? There's no guarantee that the new buyer will actually value your rooftop solar at $15,000 Right. Right.